Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder

IN WHAT SENSE CAN WE SPEAK OF THE INTERNATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION?

During the first months after the Russian proletariat had conquered political power (October 25 [November 7], 1917,) it might have seemed that the proletarian revolution in other countries would be very little like ours, because of the tremendous differences between backward Russia and the advanced countries of Western Europe. But we have now considerable experience, of an international scope, which pretty definitely establishes the fact that some fundamental features of our revolution are not local, not peculiarly national, not Russian only, but that they are of international significance. And I say “international significance”, not in the broad sense of the word; not some features, but all fundamental and many secondary features are, in the sense of their influence upon other countries, of international significance. Not in the strictest sense of the word—that is, taking it in its essence—or in the sense of the historical inevitability of a repetition, on an international scale, of what we in Russia have gone through; but one must admit some fundamental features of our revolution to be of such international significance. Of course, it would be the greatest mistake to exaggerate this truth and to apply it to more than the fundamental features of our revolution. It would be likewise erroneous to keep in mind that, after the proletarian revolution in at least one of the advanced countries, things will in all probability take a sharp turn; Russia will cease to be the model, and will become again the backward (in the “Soviet” and Socialist sense) country.